


virida

by sweetestsight



Series: parallax [9]
Category: Queen (Band)
Genre: M/M, Solarpunk AU
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-07-10
Updated: 2019-07-10
Packaged: 2020-06-25 14:30:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,983
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/19747630
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/sweetestsight/pseuds/sweetestsight
Summary: He opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is blue.An epilogue, of sorts.





	virida

_It doesn’t work if he’s awake, I don’t think. We’ve only ever heard him when he’s asleep. It’s like Brian’s touch thing. Or your thing._

_I don’t have a thing._ He feels a short wave of irritation that isn’t his own, hot like a puff of desert air.

_You most certainly have a thing, darling._

Loud; they’re too loud. He lets them fade away before him as he leans back, back into the yawning warmth behind him, smooth against his skin like water. He lets himself fall into it until he feels it surrounding him, the current of it underscored by a humming rhythm like gears or cogs. There’s a comfort in the way it mulls and stews and contemplates and rolls over, over, over again.

He opens his eyes, and the first thing he sees is blue.

They come into focus slowly. Flowers. Flowers are filling his vision. They’re delicate things, little star-shaped blossoms with faintly fuzzy stems. They’re all but covering the small plant they’re growing from to the point he can barely see the leaves. 

He lets his eyes focus on them for a long moment, waiting for the room to fade into his senses slowly. There are the steel walls. There are the photos Roger hung up. There is the battered armoire, the cracked mirror, there is the rug Freddie brought from Orion. There is the window. It’s dark blue beyond, blue like the endless depths of space, and then suddenly it’s full of silver and a single yellow eye.

 _I’m dreaming,_ he thinks. He opens his mouth to say it but his throat is too rough to make a single sound, just a choked gurgle.

The cogs in the back of his head stutter and then stop. The soothing current of smooth quietude burbles and then pressurizes, surging up and up and up.

Behind him someone snuffles.

He rolls over slowly, bones stiff and muscles aching, and is met with a pair of very tired hazel eyes.

 _Awake awake awake he’s awake he’s awake awake he’s—_ the voice pauses for a minute, seeming to focus itself before continuing even louder. _Awake he’s AWAKE he’s up guys Roger Freddie he’s—_

He feels a white-hot wave of giddiness prodding across the surface of his consciousness, careful yet eager all the same. He frowns and opens his mouth to speak, and again nothing comes out.

Brian’s eyes go wide and he shushes him carefully, sitting up and tugging at John’s shoulders until he’s leaning back against his chest. It’s only then that he picks up a glass of water from the nightstand and holds it to John’s lips.

John grabs onto his wrist to steady him and chugs the whole thing.

“Easy,” Brian murmurs. “You’ll make yourself sick.”

“More?” John whispers.

Brian hums. Water splashes faintly as he refills it from a pitcher. “Slower with this one, alright? How are you feeling?”

John sips until half of it is empty and then forces himself to stop. He clears his throat. “Hurts,” he says, a little more clearly this time.

“What hurts?”

“Everything.”

Brian takes the glass from him and sets it down on the table before rubbing at his shoulders. “Here?”

“Mhmm.” He sighs and sinks further back into him—backward and _backward_ in some other way, like his mind is sinking into a warm bath. It’s dizzying but soothing down to his bones. He feels surrounded by love. “I’m dreaming,” he murmurs.

“You’re not dreaming, Deaky,” Brian replies, dropping a kiss to the top of his head before moving his hands down to rub some feeling back into John’s arms.

John sighs and turns to look at the window again. The yellow eye stares right back. It’s easily the size of his fist. The flowers smell faintly sweet, like warm soil and living things. It’s heavenly against the undercurrent of oranges that follows Freddie wherever he goes and the machine oil that perpetually perfumes the air of the ship.

The yellow eye drifts past the window and out of view. Silver scales follow it, and then a huge grey tail flickers past before it’s gone. A school of minnows trail in its wake. Brian reaches his hands finally and pauses to wrap his arms around John and hold him closer.

“It’s a good dream,” John says.

“I’m glad you like it. You’re not going to wake up from it.”

“I know,” John replies.

Brian winces. “That’s not—”

A clatter of footsteps is their only warning before the door flies open. There stands a one Roger Taylor, eyes wide and gaping mouth stretching rapidly into a grin. John gasps as a wave of elation hits him like a truck.

Brian winces again. “Rog, can you be careful with that, please?”

“Careful? Why would I want to do that?”

“He’s just waking up. He’s still in a little bit of a delicate place—”

Roger ignores him, climbing onto the bed and straddling John’s legs before kissing him soundly on the mouth. He takes full advantage of John’s startled gasp, framing his face with his hands and kissing him for all he’s worth until the two of them have to break away to breathe.

“Hi,” Roger says quietly.

John stares at him, wide-eyed. He looks almost the same as the last time John had seen him, sprinting into the dust of that planet so long ago—almost the same, but not quite. Maybe he’s a little thinner and a little older, or maybe it’s something in his eyes that’s changed. He has a manic edge to him now where he used to be settled, some sort of raw underscore that lingers in his smile.

“Hi,” John replies. “It’s like I said. It’s a good dream.”

“You’re wide awake. Do you want me to prove it?” Roger says with a grin.

That has John smiling, a tiny thing but something nonetheless. Once again he feels a wave of giddy joy sweeping through himself, and he can feel Brian’s muted huff against his hair.

And then the door swings open again.

Freddie stands there and just stares at him for a long moment. He stares right back, eyes scanning over him, because this is his Freddie, Freddie as he knows him: hair chopped short to curl against his chin, eyes shadowed, arms still wiry but padded with the kind of muscle only the mines can give. He’s wrapped in silks like he used to wear before but this is still _him_ , him of the present _._

Freddie’s eyes well with tears and all at once he rushes over. Roger hops out of John’s lap to make room and Freddie takes his place, burying his face against John’s neck. He _cries_ , really cries then in the way that they weren’t allowed to down there, and John feels a familiar touch against his mind. He lets it in without even thinking about it, and then it tugs and there’s the heat of Roger, there’s the smooth calmness of Brian.

Images flash by. He sees himself in a hospital bed. He sees himself sleeping. He sees Brian and Roger holding each other close in the darkness of the bridge, unaware of Freddie watching nearby. He sees the caves again, the endless blackness of the rocks and the soot.

Roger pushes a flurry of images at them all and John watches in slow motion as the ship plunges closer and closer to the surface of a planet. Brian is holding his hand hard enough to break it. He thinks, _I’ve failed all three of them._

He focuses hard and then nudges at Brian hesitantly. The other two seem to pause, holding their breaths. John nudges again. _Where have you been,_ he thinks carefully. _What about you what about you how are you._

Brian hesitates, and John feels the smooth calm of him run a little bit colder and a little bit faster as he tries to quell a wave of grief. Before he even can Roger is there instantly, soothing over Brian’s unease with his heat. Brian pauses for a moment, gathering himself, before slowly letting the floodgates of his mind open.

It’s nighttime on the ship and Kana is sitting before him.

They’re the only two awake in the lower decks. Blankets surround them, each one occupied by a sleeping person. Some are from Alnitak, others from Regulus. It’s their fourth trip back and forth in five days.

“I just want to understand,” he says—no, not him. It’s Brian’s voice that comes out.

Kana smiles. The deep wrinkles of her face are only accentuated by the light of the candle resting low on the cardboard box that sits between them as a table. She picks up the pitcher and pours another splash of clear liquid into each of the tiny cups sitting on its surface. “You’re a scientist,” she says.

He feels himself frown. “I hardly think this is scientific.”

That has her laughing. “Hardly, no.” She raises her glass and he grudgingly does the same, the two of them swallowing it down in unison.

It burns like rocket fuel and he does his best not to let it show on his face, only gagging slightly as he takes a breath. “What does it have to do with science, then?”

She hums. “Can you define entropy for me?”

“It’s a thermodynamic principle,” he says immediately, voice still rough from the liquor. “Work is obtained from ordered molecular energy. There will always be some work which is not useful, and that amount increases over time. On a more colloquial level it’s known as the theory that all things will one day devolve into chaos.”

She raises her eyebrows. “Quite the scientist. I suppose you won’t like this next part, then. What are the odds that billions of years ago one star went supernova, and sometime in the last few decades energy from that star and that star alone came into being and formed a person?”

“I’m not following.”

Her smile widens. “How much energy does one person hold? Potential, sure. Thermal, kinetic, all that. Electrical, some people seem to say.”

“In the brain,” he mutters.

“Energy is passed down and transformed. When a star explodes that energy is spread across the universe. The thermal energy dissipates into space. The light energy spreads far and wide. All of it is just scattered about. Give it a few billion years and it’s impossible to track where it’s gone or how it’s mingled. What are the odds that a single, pure amount from just one star has ended up in a person, with no mixing from anything else?”

“Slim to none, I’d say,” he replies. He takes the jug and begins refilling the glasses. “I mean, obviously there’s always a possibility, but I’d say that’s got to be nearly impossible.”

“And what are the odds of four people being born of the same star’s energy, all within a few years of each other?”

He stops short.

“What are the odds of them coming together? At that point it’s the reverse of entropy, in my opinion. At that point they’re almost drawn together rather than destined to fall apart.”

“That’s beyond impossible,” he mutters.

“So is telepathy,” she says blandly. She raises her glass and he follows suit robotically. He doesn’t even taste it going down, still lost in his thoughts.

That’s got to be impossible.

Freddie nudges against his consciousness, sleep clinging to him but sloughing off to be replaced by concern. Brian soothes over him quickly. _Fine its fine okay go back to sleep im fine_

Freddie sends him a wave of affection before retreating again.

“You’re saying that’s what happened?” he asks Kana. “That’s why we’re—like this?”

“That’s one explanation, anyway,” she replies. “Oh, the Old World had their stories, didn’t they? That legend about humans being born with twice the amount of limbs and then being torn apart by the gods only to seek their other half for the rest of their life, that story always made me laugh. We all have our legends, though. They believed that. On Sirius we believed that stars will always try to reform in any way they can. Science these days believes in humans evolving into some sort of superheroes. It depends on who you ask.”

“I didn’t realize anyone was even discussing it.”

“We are,” she points out.

“Other than us,” he says.

“Ah.”

“It’s crazy. I mean it’s really, really crazy.”

She shrugs. “You’re the one hearing voices, not me.”

His shoulders slump as he settles on that thought. It’s crazy. It’s absolutely crazy.

But then it’s also undeniably real.

“Freddie knew ever since he was a boy. He knew he had three other parts.”

There’s a question hidden in there somewhere. “I had no idea,” he murmurs.

“Some people are more in tune to it than others,” she says.

“I need to be touching them in order to reach them,” he offers. “Unless they reach out first, I guess. Roger only seems to be able to get it to work if he’s really angry or happy or sad. Freddie never seems to have much trouble at all.”

She shrugs again. “He knew early on, I suppose. I don’t know that it’s more complicated than that. He’d heard our stories at a young age. He had more time to become open to the idea. With practice I’m sure you’ll get there.”

He lets the silence stretch for a long moment, broken only by the creaking of the ship. She refills their glasses slowly and seems to have no trouble with his sudden quietness. One thought lingers, though; one he can’t quite chase away.

“Why do you call me Believer?”

She smiles and takes a breath.

The room, the blankets, the candle and her face all fade to black. John opens his eyes.

Freddie is still curled into his chest, and his neck feels wet from his tears. Roger is pressed against John’s shoulder, his face against Freddie’s back, and Brian’s head is still pressed into his hair on his other side, his chest warm against John’s back.

He sniffles and shifts, and they all shift with him. He feels Freddie take a deep, shuddering breath.

“Was all that true?” John asks. “All of it? Even what Kana said?”

“True as far as I know, dear,” Freddie murmurs. “That’s what I was taught, anyway.”

“And everything else?”

“Everything else,” Roger says.

He swallows hard, running a hand between Freddie’s shoulder blades as Freddie curls closer. He’s almost afraid to ask, but he can’t not know. He licks his lips. “Is this Virida?” he whispers.

Brian lets out a shaky breath, and John feels him nod. “This is Virida. It is. We’re here.”

“It was right under our noses this whole time,” Roger says, laughing wetly. “A planet orbiting near Regulus that they terraformed and then left behind once the ion cloud swept in. They must have given up on it once they realized it would be impossible to navigate to. Almost impossible, anyway.”

“We got there in the end, completely by accident,” Brian adds. “It never would have shown up on radar, but now that we know where it is…”

“You should see it, darling,” Freddie says. “Life. Everywhere, there’s life. It’s so green and beautiful you won’t believe your eyes.”

“The plains stretch for days. Rich soil for growing things,” Roger adds. “Fish. So many fish. And there are _birds,_ John! There are birds everywhere! Sparrows and things! Real ones, just flying around!”

“Birds,” he echoes.

“Birds,” Roger repeats.

“Can I see?” John asks quietly.

Brian takes a breath like he’s going to argue, but Freddie silences him with a look that has Roger’s amusement blooming in the back of John’s head. “Can you walk on your own, darling?” Freddie asks gently.

John frowns and leans away from Brian’s chest. Freddie scoots off his lap, taking one arm while Brian takes the other.

Hesitantly John throws his legs over the side of the bed. He stands slowly and he can feel his muscles screaming in protest, but they’re just sore and stiff. His strength is still there. He meets their eyes and nods as they slowly let go, allowing him to stand on his own.

Roger tuts and grabs one of Freddie’s robes off the footboard, wrapping John in it carefully before taking his arm. “Can’t have your first act on the New World be catching a cold, can we?”

His feet fall into their familiar path on the metal of the gangplank, and he follows the others toward the ladder leading to the roof hatch. “I won’t catch a cold,” he argues, then pauses. “Will I? Is it cold?”

“Temperate,” Roger says, a little giddy. “It’s late spring.”

“Late spring,” John echoes.

“Three hundred and eighty-two days on this world’s calendar,” Freddie supplies. “A day is twenty six hours. The year will feel hellishly long.”

“A year on Sirius is over four hundred days,” Brian says slowly.

Freddie waves him off and climbs the ladder quickly. “Semantics, darling.”

Brian rolls his eyes but follows after him.

“You got it?” Roger asks quietly as John’s hands fall on the ladder’s rungs.

He looks up toward the open hatch and watches Brian disappear through it into the circle of blue sky. It’s incredibly blue—deep blue like Roger’s eyes, like songs about Earth used to say, the kind of blue holding secrets of the unknown. He feels his eyes water and he nods.

He climbs quickly, feeling the stretch down to his bones. When his head emerges from the hole a salty marine air like he’s never felt nearly blindsides him.

So this is how people used to feel on the Old World.

It smells familiar in a deeply primal way. The smells of seaweed and saline and sun make him dizzy and satisfies some part of his brain he didn’t even know existed. He can hear the waves, can see them lapping a few feet away where the roof of the ship is just barely protruding above the line of the tide. The blue-grey of it stretches to the horizon where it’s engulfed by a white mist.

“Brian saw a dolphin yesterday,” Freddie says.

He and Brian are sat on the thin strip of metal that’s sticking up from the tide. It’s wet and slick but they don’t seem to mind; when John climbs out fully to crawl toward them Brian reaches over and steadies him by his waist.

“This sea stretches for miles,” Brian tells him. “It’s deeper than the seas on Earth, but the fish are everywhere. The coral reefs are—John, did you ever hear of the ones on the Old World? The first time I saw these I—it took my breath away. They’re every color you could ever imagine.”

“We’re parked on a thermal jet right now,” Freddie says. “No sea life here and it’s helping keep the ship nice and warm. They’ve become the best landing places we have to keep from harming the wildlife. That over there is the first island we’ve settled on.”

He turns to look.

He can see people even from here. There are kids wading into the water to play, and further down the coast people are working hard on some sort of glass structure, built close enough to the shore that its foundation rests in the sand.

“It’s all recycled,” Roger says, settling down beside him. “You see? We brought in materials from all over so we don’t have to make anything new. That’s going to be a hydrofarm. And housing will be a little further beyond, or else we’ll anchor them and have them floating. We’ll have to see. There are some environmental scientists on Regulus who are coming in with the next wave and they’ll give us their advice.”

“The seas are deep,” Freddie offers. “They’re deep and wide. The land is rich. It’s an untouched ecosystem. Not the Old World, maybe. It isn’t Earth. It isn’t really the Star’s Needle—”

“Thank fuck for that,” Roger mutters, and Brian snorts.

“—and it isn’t Calderas. It isn’t even Virida. Virida is a place of legend. It’s not real. This is something more—not a perfect world maybe, but it’s _ours._ It’s ours to look after and make the most of. This time we’re going to do it right.”

John nods slowly. His vision goes blurry as his eyes well.

“Hey—you alright? Need to go below?” Brian asks softly.

“No, I’m—it’s alright.” He sniffs, wiping at his eyes. He doesn’t know how to tell them that out of everything he’d seen in the last few months, out of everything he’d seen in his entire life, this is no doubt the most beautiful—this, this deep and beautiful sea and these lush forests.

Near the island a seagull begins calling, and his tears spill over.

He pushes it at them. He focuses and spreads the feeling of home, the feeling of love. He spreads every memory he’d ever had of hearing about the Old World. He spreads Homer, spreads Vergil, gives them glimpses of Dvorak and the Hudson River School. Then he takes a deep breath of the salt in the air and the love he can feel from all three of them, and he lets everything ricochet off itself until it spreads indefinitely.

“I know,” Roger murmurs. “I know. We know.”

He can feel them in the back of his head; he can feel their warmth echoing off of itself, sweet enough to get drunk off.

He sniffles again. “Can we go to land? Can we go explore?”

“Of course,” Freddie says, wrapping an arm around his waist and laughing softly. “We’ll get you some real clothes and then we can go explore.”

“How long?”

“As long as you want. You can stay here forever if you want. You don’t ever have to leave again.”

“Where are you going?”

Brian hesitates before saying, “we have more people to pick up. All the ships we’ve got have been making runs. The rebel fleet will be based here once they finish with their pick-ups. Everybody will be right here.”

“I want to come with you,” John says. “Not immediately. In a day or so. I want to go.”

“We weren’t going to go for three more days at least,” Freddie says. He takes John’s hand in his own and kisses the back of his knuckles.

John smiles. “Can we stop at Calderas?”

“Of course we can.”

He sighs and rests his head against Freddie’s shoulder. Roger throws an arm over him to rub at his back, and Brian leans against Freddie’s other side. John can feel the undercurrent of their thoughts streaming through the back of his mind somewhere beside the sound of the waves and the constant tickle of the marine breeze.

Today they have this. Tomorrow they’ll have this, too. In a hundred years, weather permitting, they’ll have this as well. It may not be theirs anymore but it will still be here and people will still love it.

For the first time since he was a kid he has supreme confidence in humanity.

“Let’s go below,” he says. He wipes his eyes before standing, balancing on the slippery steel beams of the ship. “I have to go get dressed.”

Roger huffs a laugh and stands, following him to the hatch. The others trail after him.

It’s truly a supreme confidence that he has. Whatever happens, they’ll be alright. Their new planet will be alright, and maybe it’s too early to make such claims but he believes it all the same.

And for now he has this.

Roger gives him one last kiss before starting down the ladder again. John throws his first real smile in the last few months Freddie and Brian's way and takes one more deep breath of marine air before following him.

**Author's Note:**

> Here’s an epilogue of sorts to all of this!! Feels kind of incredible that it’s over, but here we are. You have @taylorfalsetto on tumblr entirely to thank for getting my ass in gear to finish this thing—I’d still be wading through wips for the next ten months otherwise!!
> 
> I’m thinking about taking a little break from writing for a while. But I’m also still plagued with new ideas every ten or so minutes, so I guess we’ll see what happens. If there’s anything you guys want me to write let me know and I’ll see what I can do. 
> 
> Thanks for reading and please let me know what you think!! 
> 
> Tumblr @justqueenthoughts


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